How Cultures are Organized II: Kinship

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How Cultures are Organized IIKinship

• ANLD 1 Summer 2007

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Kinship?
Culturally defined relationships with individuals
with culturally understood family ties.
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why study kinship?

• It is an important principle for social
  organization.
• To look for universal patterns and variable
  forms.

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kinship is culturally defined
Some kin are genetically related
consanguinity
And some are not.
affinity
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ego
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bilateral descent

• Kinship calculated through male and female
  lineage equally

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corporate groups

• Group that manages property and resources, the
  rights to which are determined through kinship
  ties
• Tend to be unilineal

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inheritance succession

• Kinship system does not necessarily determine
  rules of inheritance
• Rules of succession closely linked with the
  principle of descent but not always

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6 ways of reckoning kin

• Patrilineal
• Matrilineal
• Double
• Cognatic
• Parallel
• Crossing

(Dont bother to write this down. The list is on
page 97.)
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patrilineal
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matrilineal
ego
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bilateral descent
ego
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lineage

• People who assume shared descent from an ancestor
  and can list all links

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clan

• People who assume shared descent from an ancestor
  without being able to list all links
• Larger collective unit, composed of several
  lineages

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marriage

• bella gerant alii tu felix Austria nube

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Women a scarce resource?
Polygyny a man has more than one wife
polyandry a woman has more than one husband
http//www.smurf.com/who-en/smurfette
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exogamy / endogamy
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incest taboo

• Regulation of sex/marriage between people
  considered kin
• Universal taboo BUT incest is defined differently

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Bilateral cross-cousin marriage the Yanomamo
again
Cross cousins
ego
Parallel cousins
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Virilocal or patrilocal residence wife resides
with husbands family
Matrilocal or uxorilocal residence the married
couple resides with the brides parents/family/kin
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Bridewealth or brideprice a customary gift
at/after marriage from husband (kin) to wife
(kin)
Haq mehr
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dowry

• wifes kin group provides gifts to the husbands
  group
• compensation for the burden of the woman

http//www.folk-art-hungary.com/
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• Levirate widow marries a brother of the
  deceased.
• Sororate widower married sister (or another
  woman in the family) of the deceased

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The death of kinship?
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Modern state societies achievement-oriented
universalistic
(Talcott Parsons 1977)
Kinship-based form of organization
ascription-oriented and particularistic
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metaphoric kinship ideologies